BXW: So I was reading over your latest blog post,
Inventing a Universe, and a thought popped into my head: during the writing of
Sketches from the Spanish Mustang I spent a great deal of time getting into the
characters' heads, walking the paths they might take, looking at the town
through their eyes. Likewise, with the
novel I intend to start this summer, Driving the Spike, I have already started
the process by walking some railroad tracks where an accident occurred 108 years
ago. The idea, of course, is to see the
world through the eyes of my characters.
However, with Science Fiction, especially with imagined worlds (or
parallel universes like you discuss), how do you see the world though your
character's eyes?

MKR: What I like to keep in mind is that people are
people, whether they lived ten thousand years ago or ten thousand years from
now. If I were a Clovis hunter following herds of mammoth across the Great
Plains I think that, despite the vastly different way of life, my fellow
hunters and I would sit around the campfire at night and shoot the breeze just
as I do with my friends today. The technology would be different, our clothes,
our language, our way of perceiving the universe would all be different but we
would still be human beings. A heart not unlike mine would beat in the breast
of my Clovis twin. I would want food, shelter, love, companionship. In the two
hundred thousand years our species has wandered this Earth that has not changed
and there is no reason to believe it will change in the near future.

Now, I have never taken down a mammoth with a spear. But
I can imagine it. As a writer, imagination is key to understanding other
people, people who eventually become "characters." Would it help if I
could go back in time and see how a hunting party surrounded and felled a
mammoth, where they jabbed their spears, how many of them it took? Of course.
But I can't, so if I were to write a mammoth-hunting scene my imagination would
fill in the blanks that the archaeological record has left behind. So it is
with science fiction. When we write about the future we are not writing from a
blank slate. We have all of human history to draw on to understand how human
beings will react in different situations. For example, we know that we tend to
be suspicious and aggressive when encountering intelligent beings not like
ourselves (from history, we have the sad lesson of the Europeans' encounter
with the indigenous Americans. In my fiction, look at the treatment of the
Squamata in Sergeant Riley's Account and Sullivan's War: Book II.) Another
example from history that I draw on is the simple fact that people generally
want to be free of oppression. The entire Sullivan's War series is about this
and how many times throughout history has a power structure has fallen due to
the discontent of the oppressed? Here where I live in the Southwest, Hohokam
civilization collapsed around 1400 CE and there are Pima legends that indicate
that the people rose up against the powerful.

So writing science fiction is simply writing about
people. I cannot see alien worlds or travel through hyperspace in a ship but my
brain is capable of understanding what they might be like. My imagination can
fill in the gaps left after taking the entire shared experience of human
culture into account. I see their worlds because their eyes are like mine. I
share their hopes and desires because those are common to all human beings
across history. And my invented universe is not that different from our own,
when you really examine it. There are real-life parallels to many of the things
I write about.

Now, what I find interesting is that in Castles you
described experiences unfamiliar to you despite the fact that those experiences
are real for all too many young women across the country, across the world. For
me, that is as remarkable a feat as bringing to life an alien landscape. We've
talked about this before, but would you care to talk a bit about Maggie's
story?

BXW: As I've mentioned before, I believe Maggie spoke
through me in a way that's really hard to describe without coming off
sounding--how should I put it?--bat-shit crazy.
The fact I squirrel away information that comes to me via media may have
enabled my subconscious to postulate how a woman might view a certain situation
more so than a man who is trying to force the character into action. For example, I had a lot of trouble near the
middle of the story related to Maggie's view of abuse at the hand of her
boyfriend because that's just not something I'd ever experienced. Somehow after a few months or years,
though--and after dealing with abusive people as a manager--Maggie spoke up.

Getting into a character's head is important to me, and
that's one reason I like to interact with their supposed environment if I can,
and if I can't, then to spend an inordinate amount of time researching that
environment. However, in A Difficult Mirror, a dark fantasy epic novel to be
released (hopefully) next winter, I couldn't walk around the environment since
it didn't exist. Not that I couldn't
take clues from other stories, but that the environment just didn't exist. (That's a bit vague, I know, but the novel
isn't out yet.)

You brought up something I'm curious about. I've
mentioned to you before that I was never a huge fan of science fiction; that
distinction fell to my brother. I was the fantasy type, the one who believed in
dragons and wizards and spells, oh my!
However, some historic science fiction I've read has held a sort of
special place in my heart simply because of the impact on our present. I am, of course, talking about the work of
Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, or Arthur C. Clarke.
Even Philip K. Dick. Their imaginations of technological advances helped
pave the way for our present. Writers
like Ray Bradbury or George Orwell, on the other hand, wrote people into the
future--much like you describe--and did so without the need to characterize or
build up technology that didn't exist.

How do you view technology in your stories? How do you
imagine worlds without borders or limitations, and do you hope to one day
create something that would inspire some future geneticist or engineer?

MKR: Technology. Well, let me first point out that I am
not technologically-minded at all. I am endlessly fascinated by it but if I had
to actually try to describe how an intricate piece of software or hardware
operated, I'd probably be trying to do it with sticks and a length of string.
So, the technology in my stories isn't particularly original. I'll readily
admit that. I rely on many tried and true tropes of the genre: hyperspace
travel, energy weapons, fold-up tablet computers, three-dimensional displays.
Now, since the Sullivan's War story line is supposed to take place about five
hundred years in the future, this may seem like pretty low-tech stuff. I
actually have a reason for this that will eventually reveal itself as I
continue to explore this universe. I will just say that just because a
technological advance is made doesn't mean it will be readily accepted.

I suppose I am comfortable with a certain level of technology,
a level that has already been explored by many science fiction writers and is
accepted and liked by a great many science fiction readers. Again, my own
ignorance about technology prevents me from currently writing anything like
cyberpunk. I just don't have the background to do it justice. So I really don't
see my science fiction as the type that will inspire future engineers. Rather,
I see my work as inspiring (if, in fact, it inspires anyone at all) future
humanitarians, future philosophers. Remember, science fiction is about
exploring how humans respond to fantastical situations as much as it is about
inventing and describing cool technology. This is one of the reasons I consider
2001: A Space Odyssey to be my favorite book. Clarke had the scientific
knowledge to make the technology one hundred percent plausible but the story
is, essentially, about humanity. I mean, it begins with the dawn of
consciousness, with the evolution (via external means in his story) of
creatures that would one day become human beings! Because of his invented world
of the near future, his characters--Dave Bowman in particular--are able to have
experiences that no other humans have before experienced. How it affects them
is just as fascinating as how future technology, such as the HAL 9000 computer,
might work (or not work). How does the realization that an alien intelligence
has visited our solar system affect them?

I often think about what would happen if we were to wake
up one day and have undeniable proof that we were not alone in the universe.
What effect would it have on world religions? I mean, in the 16th century
Copernicus developed a heliocentric model of the solar system and while no one
with any sense would deny the truth of this model today, there are many who still
have a very geocentric, or Earth-centric, view of reality: that we, human
beings, are at the center of God's divine plan, that, in fact, we are created
in God's image and are his chosen species. Remember, it was only two thousand
years ago that not only were humans God's chosen species on the planet, but a
very specific group inhabiting the Levant were his chosen race. I speak from a
Judeo-Christian perspective, of course, because it is the tradition that has
most shaped the Western world. Now, this type of thinking has been used to
justify and explain our dominance on this planet. But what if another,
intellectually superior species managed to cross the vast distances between
star systems and arrive at ours? God wouldn't seem to favor us so strongly then,
would he?

I do believe in a creator. To believe in a specific god
requires more faith than I have, though. I must trust that the creator,
whatever it may be, gave me the ability--via evolution--to observe the world
empirically for a reason. We are a species that is meant to question the world
around us, not invent angels and devils to which to ascribe the mysteries of
the universe. To return to my main point, this is my focus when I write science
fiction. I hope to inspire future dreamers, people who will look at our world
and see it for what it really is but also see what it can be if we throw off
the shackles of tribe, of clan, of race, of nation, even of species. I know
that to date my work hasn't explored this as fully as I would like but I am
working toward it and my next project, Chrysopteron, will fully explore these
ideas.